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UPDATED With Suggestions | An Explainer on Electing Judges in California

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What to do about voting for or against judges is a thing this year. I’m hoping today’s column will answer some of the questions readers have asked in recent days.  

The attention paid to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing has made a lot of people take notice of the judicial contests appearing on their ballots. At least that is what I assume is going on, having researched and/or produced a half-dozen or so voter guides since 2012.

San Diegans who have heard, read, or seen campaign materials about many candidates and propositions open up the ballot and are confounded by seeing 16 judicial contests for people they know nothing about. (There’s a seventeenth contest, and we’ll get to it further down in the story.)

Who are these people listed for California’s Court of Appeals and Supreme Court and why are we being asked to vote on them?   [Read more…]

53,000 Voter Registrations On Hold In Georgia, 70% African American | Video Worth Watching

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Here’s this week’s case of Republican voter suppression. From the MSNBC YouTube page:

AP reports that more than 53,000 residents have had their registrations on hold thanks to a policy that requires their applications to “precisely match” info from other state agencies. Reasons could be mundane as a “dropped hyphen in a last name.” 70% of the people on the list are African Americans.

  [Read more…]

My Meeting with Escondido Mayor Sam Abed Was Worse Than Expected

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By Wendy Wilson / Alianza North County

Most people in Escondido are not required to meet with the mayor. I had to and was outraged. The following account is all from one meeting with Sam Abed. It gives you a good idea of who he is and what drives his policies.

As the local arts agency representative, my task was to present data about cultural tourism in Escondido and North County.

At the start of my meeting with Mayor Abed, he told me right off…My first priority as mayor is my personal finances.   [Read more…]

How Bad is Congressman Duncan Hunter? Let Us Count the Ways…

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By D. Weisman / Escondido Grapevine,

Duncan Hunter was named filthiest grifter in Congress by the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), but his son Duane — who started going by the same Duncan Hunter name to fool voters in 2008 — seems to have outdone his father.

After three decades of like-father-like-son criminal grift, voters in California’s 50th Congressional District finally, at long last, have a legitimate opportunity to throw out the bum(s).

Vote for Ammar Campa-Najjar as if your life depended on it because it does.

Number one reason to vote against Hunter is his 60-count federal indictment for the criminal grift of illegally using at least $250,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses.
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The Union-Tribune’s False Narrative on Education and the Race for Superintendent of Public Instruction

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A recent editorial in the San Diego Union-Tribune called for electing a former banker and charter school chief as Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI). Following a familiar destroy public education (DPE) script; the editor creates a false crisis as the predicate for an urgent need to elect charter school executive, Marshall Tuck, over California State Assemblyman, Tony Thurmond.

Another Phony Baloney Education Crisis.The piece opens by stating:

“The 21st century has been a transformative time in public education. While most educators were disappointed with the mixed results of the 2002 federal law that linked aid to improving test scores — the No Child Left Behind Act — some states have seen dramatic progress. In union strongholds like Massachusetts and New Jersey, and in nonunion states like Florida and Texas, reforms that emphasize accountability from students, parents, teachers and administrators alike — and that use evidence-based best practices to standardize and improve teaching tactics — have boosted student achievement. These four states’ 2017 scores in the massive National Assessment of Educational Progress confirm this success.”

Stunningly a group that cheered on the federal take-over of public education by the No Child Left Behind ACT (NCLB) admits the results were “mixed.” “Mixed” is a soft way of characterizing the abject and destructive failure that was NCLB. The editor implies that NCLB theory actually worked when citing the use of “evidence-based best practices to standardize and improve teaching tactics” as the reason for improved scores by the good schools on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing.   [Read more…]

Bernie Sanders to Stump for Congressional Candidates Mike Levin and Ammar Campa-Najjar in San Diego

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Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will visit San Diego to speak on behalf of congressional Democratic candidates Mike Levin and Ammar Campa-Najjar later this month as part of a nine-day nationwide pre-midterm blitz.

Rallies and events for the Sanders tour, which begins October 19, will include support for candidates in Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Iowa, Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and California.

Details of his appearances have yet to be announced, although it seems probable–based on news reports about the itinerary–Sanders’ local events will occur just prior to his final stop in Oakland on October 27.   [Read more…]

Donna Frye Makes the Case for Vivian Moreno as D8 Councilmember

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By Donna Frye

Last week I officially endorsed Vivian Moreno to serve as the next Council District 8 City Councilmember. Vivian is someone who has strong core beliefs and values that will not change based on politics. She is honest and straightforward- she tells it like it is and I appreciate that.

Vivian and I agree about what it takes to be a public servant. It means listening to others with an open mind, understanding what people are saying about their positions on issues and the reasons people believe as they do and working hard to find equitable and reasonable solutions. Vivian was active in serving her community long before she ever thought about running for office. Her passion to serve is a result of her upbringing and strong family ties. Vivian is a lifelong resident of South San Diego and knows firsthand the challenges facing the community.   [Read more…]

San Diego Progressive Voter Guide, November 2018

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A few words about our process are in order. The San Diego Free Press is an all-volunteer group which has been publishing daily since June 4, 2012. A commitment to activism and progressive politics is what drives our dedication to this project. We’ve been researching the candidates and causes on the general election ballot for the past 18 months.  You can see the various articles we’ve published at our archive of 2018 election coverage.

The editorial board includes Brent Beltrán, Anna Daniels, Frank Gormlie, Patty Jones, Rich Kacmar, Annie Lane, and Doug Porter. We met on September 24 to vote on endorsements, starting out by acknowledging that the country is in dire straights these days. We feel this election is about triaging the damage already done as much as it is about building a better future. 

Another factor differentiating this year’s evaluations was something I’ll call the Kavanaugh caveat. In situations where all things were close to equal from a policy perspective, we defaulted to the women running for office.   [Read more…]

Do You Know Who Doesn’t Want You To Vote? | More Video Worth Watching

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Does taunting work? Knock the Vote intends to find out. Here’s a PSA produced for the campaign by the Acronym group. It slams Millennials for just about all of the negative stereotypes out there. Will it motivate its audience to prove the stereotypes wrong by showing up at the polls on November 6th? I guess we’ll find out in 29 days.   [Read more…]

2018’s Bottom of the Political Barrel: Three Candidates You Should Avoid Voting For

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Mail-by-vote ballots will be arriving at homes in California next week and, after posting more than three dozen articles about candidates and issue since the June primary, it’s time to wrap up this phase of our election coverage.  There were lots of contests I wanted to cover, but couldn’t for lack of time.

My parting shot in this series involves a short-but-sweet essay warning folks about some people NOT to vote for. There are people running for office who you shouldn’t vote for, and then there are candidates are so bad you should consider crossing the street to avoid them if you see them coming your way.

On Monday, we’ll be posting the San Diego Free Press Progressive Voter Guide. The editorial board met last week to consider endorsements; those will be announced in the Guide. We endorsed 14 ballot measures and 37 candidates. Three candidates were so bad they deserved special mention.   [Read more…]

Poli-trick-ians Like Summer Stephan and Myrtle Cole Have Got to Go

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Nothing that these Establishment politicians (Republican and Democrat alike) do surprise me anymore, but it still disgusts me. I pray we learn our lesson from June’s election.

Remember when then-candidate, Summer Stephan suggested to the Union-Tribune she was a reformer? Remember when she told voters that she believed law enforcement officers were not above the law? Remember when she said she cared deeply for victims and victims’ families?

All lies. Since being in that seat, she’s cleared every officer involved in the shootings and deaths of San Diegans. Most recently, on September 21, she cleared every officer involved in the death of Earl McNeil although the Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide.   [Read more…]

Republicans Harkey and Hunter Run on Pity Platform | San Diego’s Congressional Contests

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Three of San Diego’s five Congressional districts are, for now, dominated by Democratic incumbents. Electoral contests in the 51st (Vargas), 52nd (Peters), and 53rd (Davis) all include no-name, no-cash–Republican challengers.

Today I’ll focus on the noisy political contests in the 49th and 50th congressional districts, with a cursory listing of the candidates for the non-competitive seats at the end of the column.

The current version of history says the 49th’s retiring Republican Congressman Darrell Issa saw the handwriting on the wall following a surprisingly close election in 2018 and regular protests outside his Vista office.

While I’m sure both things played a role, a personal drama may have played a role in that decision.   [Read more…]

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